The silver 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier was going about 70 mph when it drifted slowly from the right lane to the left lane of westbound U.S. 36 turnpike between Louisville and Boulder that Friday night.

Sparks flew as the car careened against a concrete jersey barrier for a couple hundred yards in the dark.

After the car finally came to a stop near the crest of Davidson Mesa at 10:18 p.m. on July 9, 2004, a witness stopped and called 911. The man who called in had no idea why the car had suddenly started drifting to the right shoulder of the road.

Another witness would tell investigators that he figured the victim may have had a heart attack.

But what was wrong with the driver, Francis “Frank” Santos, 37, a father of five, wasn’t linked to health concerns.

Santos’ car window was shattered. He had been shot in the left side of his head.

A second witness who was three cars behind Santos, told police he saw glass “spraying on the highway” beneath the other cars before Santos` vehicle started to weave and hit the median, West said.

The man pulled over behind Santos’ car.

When the first witness learned why the crash happened he was surprised to learn the cause. He hadn’t seen or heard a gunshot.

The first time a story about the murder of Sidney “Sid” Wells appeared in The Denver Post it was buried deep in the newspaper on page four of the B section.

The relative anonymity of the case would not last long. The following day, the newspaper ran a story about the same case on the front page after it was learned that Sid had been the boyfriend of 22-year-old Shauna Redford, the daughter of actor Robert Redford.

When he first began dating Shauna, Sid didn’t know that she was the daughter of a celebrity.

His friends described him as a “clean-cut, All-American boy.” He grew up in Longmont, played football in high school, was working his way through the University of Colorado and dreaming of a TV journalism career, according to dozens of media accounts the past 31 years.

The journalism major was about to enter his senior year in college. He was interning that summer with KMGH-TV in Denver. He was a member of the “Silver Steps,” a four-member disco dance group he’d joined with friends from Longmont.

“A gunshot into the back of his head stilled those dreams,” former Denver Post Staff Writer Jane Cracraft wrote in that front page story on Aug. 3, 1983.

It has been 31 years to the day since Sid Wells was murdered. His brother, Sam, found his body on Aug. 1, 1983.

Since Sid’s death his family became heavily involved in the movement to bring justice to the families of murder victims. His brother, Robert Wells, is the executive director of Families of Victims of Homicide and Missing Persons, an advocacy group that has spearheaded new laws that ensure cold cases continue to be investigated.

Sid Wells was 22 at the time of his murder. He was living with his brother, Samuel, in a condominium at Spanish Towers, 805 29th St.

When he moved into Shauna’s condominium in January 1983, Sid wrote an advertisement in the Boulder Daily Camera looking for someone to take his place in the fifth-floor condominium. “Luxury condominium for $300 a month. Call Sid, 443-1441.”

Real estate agent Thayne Smika, a 24-year-old college dropout, called back and signed a rental agreement.

Nicolas Ferrel-Ibarra was a reporter in Mexico, one of the most dangerous places on the planet to be a journalist.

Nicolas Ferrel-Ibarra, 35

Only eight other countries around the world including Iraq have had more journalist murders than Mexico, according to Committee to Protect Journalists, an international advocacy group.

Since 1992, the organization confirmed that 28 reporters, editor and photographers have been murdered directly because of their work as journalists in Mexico. Another 41 journalists in the country had been killed during the same span of time, but the motive of the murders had not been confirmed, CPJ reports.

By comparison, there have been only five journalists killed in the U.S. since 1992 including Manuel de Dios Unanue, a reporter for El Diario/La Prensa, who was gunned down on March 11, 1992, in New York City.

Ferrel-Ibarra first worked as a journalist in the border city of Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, where two journalists have been killed since the Mexican Drug War flared up in 2007.

A colleague of his, Armando Rodriguez Carreon, 40, was a crime reporter for El Diario de Ciudad Juárez.

Armando Rodriguez, 40

Before his murder on Nov. 13, 2008, in Ciudad Juárez, Carreon spoke with a representative of CPJ about the hazards of working as a journalist in the violent city engulfed in a drug war. Carreon had been receiving threats on a routine basis.

“The risks here are high and rising, and journalists are easy targets,” Rodríguez told CPJ. “But I can’t live in my house like a prisoner. I refuse to live in fear.”

An “unidentified assailant” gunned down Rodríguez as the veteran crime reporter sat in a company sedan in the driveway of his home. Rodríguez’s eight-year-old daughter, whom he was preparing to take to school, watched from the back seat.

Days before he was murdered, Rodríguez had written an article accusing a local prosecutor’s nephew of having links to drug traffickers, according to CPJ.

Attempts to solve the case have triggered more violence.

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Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.